REVIEW

Castle Rock: Season 1 - Episode 5

Posted: August 8, 2018

The story moves on in episode 5. To Henry’s surprise Bill Skarsgård’s (it’s hard to talk about someone that doesn’t have a name…) character gets released from prison. He has become a burden. The only problem is that he has nowhere to go. The system can’t take him in so the first night he ends up sleeping in Molly’s office, on the second floor which is being renovated. He has a hard time staying put though so during the night he goes wandering and ends up checking in on a family. We don’t really know if it’s a memory or if he’s actually visiting a family in Castle Rock. My bet is the latter. The family who is celebrating one of their kids birthday ends up fighting and probably killing each other. Was it Skarsgård’s characters fault? We don’t know but probably.

Molly’s employee Jackie, who we find out is a relative to Jack Torrance (and has taken her name after Jack to get back to her parents for not talking about him), finds Skarsgård’s character and takes him for a ride. He ends up on the roof of the old shirt factory and when Molly (who thinks he’s going to jump) tries to talk him down she hears all his thoughts and there are a lot of old Castle Rock happenings heard there. Molly realizes that something is wrong with him.

After that he ends up spending the night at Henry’s mother’s place and since Henry has been putting up surveillance cameras to keep an eye on his mother, Alan Pangborn sees him. The episode ends with Alan and Skarsgård’s character meeting in the woods where Alan tells him that he let the warden take him all those years ago. And that, while Alan is now old, Skarsgård’s character looks just the same.

So, what can we draw from all of this? Well, during all this we also see Henry’s mother Ruth jumping from a bridge (Henry has to save her) and it’s clear that she knows something is wrong. Everyone thinks she is losing her mind though. But we see a figure on a bridge in the town model in Molly’s office that could be Ruth and it might have been put there by Skarsgård’s character. Alan thinks Skarsgård’s character is the Devil since he helped the warden. There is something wrong with Skarsgård’s character, no doubt of that. He either is the Devil (he might or might not know it himself) or he’s someone who can feel the Devil’s work and there is a lot of that in Castle Rock.

We’re halfway into the season and there are a lot of questions left…

Lilja's final words about Castle Rock: Season 1 - Episode 5

I love the small nods to King’s other stuff. Like Jack Torrance relative, the mentioning about murders and killer dogs and a lot more. It’s done very tasteful and I love it.